24–28 Aug 2026
Kirchhoff Institute for Physics (KIP)
Europe/Berlin timezone

Generative Criticality in Large Language Model Temperature Scaling

24 Aug 2026, 16:20
8m
1.404

1.404

Explainability & Theory 🔀 Explainability & Theory

Speaker

Xingyu Guo (South China Normal Univeristy)

Description

We propose a statistical-field framework for text generated by large language models (LLMs), treating token embeddings as continuous spin variables on a one-dimensional chain. Defining a susceptibility from the connected two-point correlator and an order parameter from the ensemble-averaged embedding field, we vary the softmax temperature $T$ and observe a sharp susceptibility peak near a characteristic $T_c$ with power-law-like scaling, a concurrent rapid change in the order parameter, and a collapse onto a single semantic direction below $T_c$. The intrinsic dimension estimated by the two nearest neighbor (TwoNN) method independently corroborates these findings, reaching a minimum near $T_c$. Results are robust across model scales (Qwen3: 0.6B--32B) and prompt categories. While the phenomenology closely resembles a continuous phase transition, the non-equilibrium nature of autoregressive generation warrants further investigation. Our framework provides quantitative tools for probing the collective statistical structure of LLM outputs and suggests connections between decoding strategies and critical phenomena.

Authors

Mr Huajian Ruan (South China Normal Univeristy) Mr Jinyang Li (RIKEN) Xingyu Guo (South China Normal Univeristy) Dr Lingxiao Wang (RIKEN)

Presentation materials